Tuesday, 16 July 2013

Is it possible to have one set of principles that
sets out what is ‘fair’ in a society which is full of individuals with
different beliefs in what the word means?

A little pre-amble on the words we use….

Fairness seems an easier word to use than
’justice’. People will declare they have been treated fairly or unfairly and it
is not really something that can be upgraded to a justice issue. There’s also a
danger of saying an issue, which is really a personal preference, is a ‘justice
issue’. It can diminish something that really is a justice issue, such as false
imprisonment.The use of the word
‘justice’ means it is more important, more life changing and likely to rally
folk to the cause. It is a word to be used only in certain contexts and avoided
in others, particularly if you want to down grade an issue that really is a
justice one and convince people it is just about fairness. It is as if the
heads will turn if someone is being treated unjustly but if it’s only unfair
they can sort it out for themselves. It may be that justice is something where
mutual agreement is more likely as it is easier to define, and therefore
simpler for folk to rally together to make a difference.

Individuals want to be treated fairly but it is
more complex, it is also about how other people are treated that needs to be seen as fair to the rest of us.

The word ‘fairness’ has come up recently in the
context of changes to the Welfare State. It has been stated that changes are
needed because we want to live in a ‘fair’ society and this is highlighted
specifically where people who don’t work all day shouldn’t have a better
standard of living than those who do work all day. It is deemed unfair and needs
to be ‘fixed’ back to what some people consider as ‘fair’.

The deserving and undeserving poor used to be the
wording for those who required assistance by the state. So depending on whether
you were considered by the authorities to be deserving or undeserving you would
be sent to the workhouse, alms house or prison. We don’t use those phrases now,
we use fair and unfair. I think because we don’t want to use the word ‘poor’!
If we accept people are poor we might feel an obligation or even, dare I say, compassion
to help them, characteristics on which the welfare state was created….so we
avoid the word poor and certainly not justice….

Today it goes something like this: - it is fair
for the state to look after the disabled, the elderly (in the past the alms
houses would look after them), or those out of work for short periods because
their employer ran into difficulties because of the economic climate(off to the
work house for them) and it is unfair on
ushardworking tax payers for
the state to look after anybody else and we consider them lazy or guilty of
taking the system for a ride (prison for them). In reality that covers everyone
else on state benefits - the long term unemployed because they live in a region
where employment opportunities are non-existent, or were made redundant and now
find it impossible to get a job due to their age, single parents, people with
mental health issues, people who are unemployable due to being failed by
parents, education and the system generally. So the argument/propaganda
shouts-it is unfair to the rest of ‘us’
for ‘them’ to sit about all day, doing nothing and having their rent paid and
an income that they can ‘comfortably’ live on. They have cars, iPhones and Sky
TV, they’re in the pub and have holidays, spare bedrooms and spare income. It
is their choice to live on benefits and they should get a job or move to
smaller properties.

It is impossible to prove this is true for the vast
majority of people who are on benefits. The benefits people receive are set out
to be minimal, they are carefully calculated to give people a very low standard
of living, somewhere slightly above the bread line. The reality for most; it is
not their choice to be on benefits, there are no jobs available for them and
there are no smaller houses for them to move into. The reality is for the
majority of people on benefits life has been extremely difficult, traumatic or
opportunities were never available to them. Jobs have been lost, unexpected pregnancies
happen, sickness leads to long-term inability to return to the career path,
divorce….life happens and when people are in poverty it is highly unlikely it
is their choice to be there. What is unfair is for society to not look after
people who are poor, especially when the reason they are poor is because they
have been failed by that society in the first place! What is fair is to help
those who are worse off than us.

My thought is this, perhaps if we used language
such as; ‘poor’, ‘living in poverty’ and ‘oppression of the poor’ which is a
justice issue, we may find there is compassion enough for us to stop blaming
people for a broken system and find ways to actually help them.

When I was kid back in the 1970s (yep I’m THAT
old) Christians would often wear a little yellow badge with a smiley face on it
and the words “Jesus Loves You”, it probably started with the Jesus People or
some other slightly ‘whacky’ bunch, probably in America, but pretty soon
everyone was wearing them, even your parents or the local pastor. These days teenagers and others old enough to
know better wear wrist-bands with W.W.J.D on them instead; they’re easier to
hide up your sleeve especially if you’re also wearing about five others wrist
bands showing your opposition to bullying, your support for breast cancer
awareness, A.I.D.S research or your enthusiasm for real ale!

In case you’ve been off-planet for the last few
years I shall explain that W.W.J.D stands for ‘What would Jesus do?’ Superficially it seems like a good thought;
especially for a hormone ravaged Christian teenager who’s just noticed the allure
of alcohol, the opposite sex, recreational drug use or all of the above. However
once again I think we’re missing something.
We’re focussing on the wrong issue; we’re focusing (as ‘law’ always
does) on the sin or the behaviour. We’re
hoping this magic wristband will suddenly become a powerful talisman and start
glowing or get hot or tight on the wrist as danger approaches and the teenager
will suddenly remember their Youth Leader’s words from the previous Sunday as
he spoke on the perils of teenage pregnancy, drunkenness and memory impairment
due to excessive marijuana use. The
sin-management program will kick in and they’ll remain sweet and innocent and
good. Nothing wrong with that you may
say, and to some extent I agree with you, as a parent of two teenagers (and one
grown-up) I hope they don’t use drugs, get pregnant before the time is right or
end up drunk on someone’s floor/road/hospital bed.

However sin-management isn’t the answer, knowing
what you SHOULDN’T do rarely stops anyone from doing something tempting,
attractive or naughty! Our behaviour
flows out of our identity and not out of a set of rules, rules are excellent
for showing what you have done wrong but not great at stopping you doing it in
the first place. An identity that is
affirmed as a beloved son or daughter, a precious unique identity that causes
delight and pleasure in the eye of the beholder is worth its weight in
diamond-encrusted gold. Knowing who you
are will prevent many bad choices as the bad choices are often about seeking
something we feel we lack; if we feel we need acceptance, friendship, ‘love’,
beauty etc. we can end up looking for these things in the social vices that
promise to provide them.

The W.W.J.D concept is focussing again on what we
do, our actions, the external, our performance; have we prayed, have we read
our Bibles, have we fasted, have we won our school/town/nation for Jesus? They’re a guilt-trip in rubber! Our heavenly Father is far more concerned
with who we are, and who we are has been determined by Jesus’ death and
resurrection and not by us! We can rest
in the identity He gives us as a free gift; we are co-heirs with Christ of all the
blessing and promises of God, filled with living water bubbling up from within,
we are the righteousness of God in Christ, welcomed into the wonderful dance
the trinity has been enjoying since before the foundation of the world when God
already knew us and marvelled at the beauty of his own handiwork.

And so we come back to the little yellow badges
with ‘Jesus Loves You’ on them. Maybe
they’re a bit cheesy, maybe they’re a bit old-fashioned but maybe we should
bring them back and wear them instead of our wrist-bands, as then we’ll be wearing
something that tells each other a truth that affirms our identity over and over
again instead of something that asks a question that sin-management programs
can’t really answer.

Monday, 15 July 2013

My name is Marguerite which means pearl. Pretty
nice thought and during my life I suppose I’ve been encouraged about being
precious and unique. I like to think the parable by Jesus of the pearl of great
price is talking about me and knowing that he paid the ultimate price for me. There’s
also something encouraging on those days where I just feel irritated that I
symbolically started off as a grain of sand placed inside an oyster and over a
period of time, through some irritation, I will turn into a pearl. Remembering teaching
about iron sharpening iron and quotes about what doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger…..we’re all a work in progress after all. We’re all on a journey of
becoming more like Jesus, we start off as a total mess and after lots of hard
and painful work by God via the Holy Spirit, with our submission and humility, we’ll
be changed into something more acceptable to God. A work going on underneath
the covering of the blood of Jesus, a sinner under a cloak of protection from
the wrath of God. The final completion of the job at Judgement, after a
shameful experience of my life being played on the big screen for everyone to
see, being held to account for where I failed in the improvement plan, why had
I given the Holy Spirit such a difficult job in turning me into Jesus????

I don’t think like that anymore, thank God!

I do believe I am unique, precious and of value. I
don’t believe I started off a mess or am still a mess or that over time the
Holy Spirit is working hard on turning me into Jesus under the covering of his
blood.

As a starting point; if God wanted lots of mini
Jesus’ he would have made me a boy….My creator wants me, the Marguerite he had
in mind before I was even born. I don’t believe he wants to shape us all into
identical models of the perfect Christian, I think he wants us to know our true
identity as he created us, with our own personalities, our own unique selves
made in His image.

When I used to think I was‘a mess’, I didn’t look far enough back. I
only thought about my life before I was 17, thinking the improvement plan began
once I believed God was interested in my life, from the time I heard God’s
commitment to care for me. I became aware as the years went by that he was
caring for me and providing for me long before I was 17 but I still did not really
understand how God viewed me back then. I needed to grasp something of God’s
original thought towards me and his eternal thoughts towards me, thoughts that
didn’t change as my behaviour became more rebellious. He has always wanted the
best for me and more importantly he has always, and will always, love me.

I am still a work in progress though. My starting
point is not from mess to perfect, it is from perfect in his sight to knowing I’m perfect in his sight. The
journey continues ….knowing the destination is not going to be a shameful
experience as all my mess has already been taken away by Jesus 2,000 years ago.
I just need to remember to push the reset button every so often and delete all
the information that would tell me a different story. To continue to walk with
the Spirit who reveals the truth that will renew my mind, removing the lies
that tell me I’m ‘less than’. To go back to the beginning to see my story the
way God sees my story, to believe what he believes about me. I am a pearl of
great price.

A final thought, there is a daisy called
Marguerite and people have been known to pull daisy’s apart to check who loves
them….he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not. Today is a
good day to know he loves me, he loves me and there is no petal in the universe
with ‘he loves me not’ written on it.